By Ruben Q. Leyva

This essay is part of the ongoing "What Does 'Gila Apache' Mean?" series. This essay builds on the earlier pieces by showing how Apache continuity becomes legible not through fixed names or places, but through repeated actions, relationships, and returns across a shared corridor. Sabinal in this essay refers to a negotiated farm settlement located in Socorro County, New Mexico.

By now, we've learned what to trust. We believe in behavior, like farming at Apache peace settlements, more than we do Spanish administrative spelling. We understand farming is diplomacy, not assimilation.

And we know that the archive isn't a stable thing; not because it is meaningless, but because it was never built to reflect Indigenous belonging. Which leads, of course, to the pose that many a reader inevitably strikes at some point while navigating through Spanish colonial and church records: How do you read a name that refuses to stay the same?

I sympathize with Jamie Charleston's aesthetic concerns about mining operations around Silver City.( LTE: A View With a Question Mark 1/14/26)

When my wife and I moved here over 20 years ago, we discovered a hiker's paradise. If you extend your trailhead to an hour's drive circumference from Silver City, you can spend a lifetime and never explore it all. It's just magnificent.

Before Juniper pollen sidelined us, we spent many days, both on and off-trail, hiking in this area. In all that time, outside of the Gomez Peak - Little Walnut areas, I don't think we met more than a dozen fellow hikers. The question then arises, how many people in Grant County are or would be inconvenienced by mining activity, present or future? I would guess less than 10 percent, and most of us would probably rate forest fires a far greater aesthetic problem than mining operations.

As I drive east on Highway 180, I'm greeted by that massive, multi-colored mountain. Some folks call it beautiful. I prefer trees on my mountains. Pines. Junipers. Maybe something that looks like it might photosynthesize.

What's funny is that when I drive around Silver City, I see plenty of mountains with trees on them—north, south, west. Honest mountains. Mountains that don't look like a geology PowerPoint slide. But now I hear another company has purchased leases on more than 13,000 acres near Pinos Altos, and I find myself wondering: will my view to the north soon rival my view to the east? And after that, what about the south and west? Am I slowly encircling myself with a full 360-degree panorama of treeless, multi-colored ambition?

By Ruben Q. Leyva

This essay is part of the ongoing "What Does 'Gila Apache' Mean?" series. This essay builds on the earlier pieces by showing how Apache continuity becomes intelligible not through fixed names or places, but through repeated actions, relationships, and returns across a shared corridor.

In the previous essay, I covered why records so often bear south, and how that can be reconciled with family tradition about being Gila or Mogollon or Mimbres. The point was that church and presidio records were located where colonial systems safely could reach Apache people, not the place of origin of Apache life.

There's another pattern that makes this clearer, and it's easier to notice than names.

It is farming.

Escalating "Legal Observer" Activism Raises Public Safety and Civil Liberties Concerns - From Ice Operations to Abortion Clinics

(Online Version): https://www.abortionfreenm.com/news/escalating-legal-observer-activism-raises-public-safety-and-civil-liberties-concerns-from-ice-operations-to-abortion-clinics

By Bud Shaver

Albuquerque, New Mexico — Abortion Free New Mexico is sounding the alarm over the rapid expansion and increasingly aggressive use of so-called "legal observers," a tactic now deployed across multiple enforcement and public-order contexts — including lawful federal immigration operations and peaceful pro-life sidewalk counseling outside abortion facilities.

Originally presented as neutral monitors, legal observer programs have increasingly evolved into activist tools used to escalate encounters, provoke law-enforcement intervention, and suppress constitutionally protected activity.

By Chad Matheson, Interim CEO, Albuquerque Regional Economic Alliance (AREA)

New Mexico has always been a place where big ideas take root. From the groundbreaking science at Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories to the innovations driving our growing aerospace and energy sectors, our state has a proud history of discovery. If we want to secure a prosperous future for New Mexico, one filled with high-paying jobs, thriving businesses, and opportunity for generations to come, we must double down on an what we do best: research and development.

By Ruben Q. Leyva

This essay is part of the ongoing “What Does ‘Gila Apache’ Mean?” series.

Out in the community I’m hearing these same words repeated. My family is from the Gila. We’re Mogollon Apache. We’re Mimbreños. These are not casual descriptions. They are locational identifications, passed generation after generation of families who will recall about mountains and rivers and routes so much more assuredly than any archive could convey but which no professional human had thought to consult.

And then, often later, something challenges that certainty. A baptismal record appears. A parish name. Janos. Chihuahua. Bavispe. Sonora. Suddenly, people are asking: Did we not know something or was what we were told about our family’s previous homeland a lie?

It isn't.

By Steven B. Chavez, Principal, Mesa del Sol, SC3 International, SC3 Development and SC3 Mechanical and Electrical

New Mexico stands at a crossroads. We have the natural resources, creative talent, and geographic advantages to thrive in the 21st-century economy—but for too long, we've struggled to convert potential into prosperity. Our state's economic challenges are not new, but they are urgent: too many of our young people leave to find opportunity elsewhere; too few companies invest and grow here; and our public and private sectors often operate in silos rather than in partnership.